


Max Meets Righty

by Blairdiggory



Category: Paranatural (Webcomic)
Genre: Blood, Fairly graphic, Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 01:47:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7020661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blairdiggory/pseuds/Blairdiggory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A spirit fight goes horribly wrong<br/>TRIGGER WARNING FOR BLOOD AND GORE</p>
            </blockquote>





	Max Meets Righty

It’s like something out of Necromantid.  
The spirit has sickles for appendages, and boy, does it have a lot of appendages. Its shear-like legs sink into the ground as it walks, a clear sign of poltergeisting. It doesn’t seem to eat any of the paranatural beings in its path; it just destroys them.  
The spirit slices through a weak ghost in front of it. Max isn’t sure what happens to the ghost (does she die again? CAN she die again?), but he hears enough of her scream to know it isn’t pretty.   
The Activity Club’s been fighting the spirit for about an hour, and while they show signs of slowing, the spirit does not. They have to find a way to get rid of it FAST, or that ghost’s fate will be theirs. Due to Lucifer’s insistence, Mr. Spender has begrudgingly called Mina Zarei in, just in case, and she’s on her way now.   
Oddly enough, Max feels a kinship with the spirit they’re fighting. Maybe it’s because it looks like the main character in one of his favorite video games. He suspects it’s because it feels nice to take out his rage with a baseball bat, but even that is becoming frustrating.   
He can barely get a hit in. Isaac can shoot lightning at it, even if it keeps dodging. Spender can trick it with its own shadow. Even Ed and Isabel have enough experience to blast it with spec shots. But him? He can barely hold his own.   
It’s been months since his induction into the club, and he thought he would learn SOMETHING about fighting by now. He can still barely control his spectral energy, his bat’s powers do little in battle, and even his parkour has gotten screwed up by the laws of spectral physics. Max just wants to be USEFUL. He wants the others in the club to know he isn’t just dead weight. It seems that he’s always a little too naive, a little inexperienced, a little too stupid to participate in real fights.   
Isabel screams somewhere to his right. His world stops as he glances around to see Isabel slip in the mud and the spirit barrel towards her, rearing on its hind legs. Its sickles gleam in the light slipping between the shadows of the trees. Max barely has time to react.  
Maybe he is a little too naive, a little too inexperienced, a little too stupid to fight because instead of using his magnetic powers to target Isabel’s metallic bracelet and launch her out of the way, he pulls himself forward into her path. His intent had been for both of them to end up tumbling out of the way, but that’s not what happens.  
His right hand, holding the bat, smacks her arm out of the path of the spirit’s razor, but pushes his into it.   
He feels the bat’s weight tumble out of his hand. He feels off-balance. Isabel was able to shoot a spec shot underneath the spirit when he pushed her out of the way and onto the ground, effectively destroying the spirit through its weak point. She hadn’t realized Max wasn’t alright. Now, she’s screaming, but it’s a more heartbroken scream than before because she realizes what she forced Max to do. She can’t stop staring at his right hand.   
Or, more accurately, where his right hand has been. Max can’t really comprehend what’s happening. He can’t comprehend the blazing pain at the end of his right arm, void of a hand, or why his head is spinning. It’s dark, but he can make out the slimy liquid gushing out of his veins with every beat of his rushing heart. Weirdly, it reminds him that he is alive, that the muscle pulsing out in the open is his own body at work, trying to save a lost cause.   
Max can’t hear anything but Isabel’s screaming and a strange white noise. He’s fixated on what’s left of his arm. He see that Ed is crying, that Isaac has run away to his secret shortcut, that Mr. Spender is shaking. He vaguely realizes that Dr. Zarei has arrived and is shouting orders at the air and is wrapping a tourniquet around what was his wrist. He feels the pressure building up and up and up in his arm until he passes out.   
At least Max is ambidextrous. He arrives home after an overnight stay at Zarei’s the next day, where Isabel was chanting “I’m so sorry” like a mantra, and Ed was hyperventilating, and Mr. Spender had to call his dad and his sister. He’s glad he doesn’t remember his family’s reactions when they came, but they still look sick to their stomachs and keep asking him if he needs anything. He’s fine, really. He doesn’t know why. Maybe he’s still in shock. Maybe it will hit him later.   
He goes upstairs to his room, ready to text Sam and Doghouse about what has happened, and greets Lefty as he enters. But something’s not right…  
“Wait… why are there two Lefty’s?”   
PJ looks too traumatized by Max’s lack of a hand to answer his question, but the two hands do a funny little jive, mirroring each other until Max realizes what’s up.  
“If that’s Lefty,” he says, pointing to the left hand. “Then who’s the right hand?”  
Phantom pain shoots up Max’s arm. He can barely feel the movement in the other hand. The right hand, unceremoniously named Righty, formerly known as Max’s right hand, makes an a-okay sign at him, and Max realizes everything will be alright.


End file.
